Wednesday, December 1, 2010

And now it's time for: Out of Context Theater.

The first rule of the Variety Society is that the best ideas are born out of collaboration. It used to be the first rule was "You do not talk about the Variety Society," but that made it really hard to promote the show, so we changed it to the collaboration thing.

So sometimes we all just get together in a room and pool ideas. I like to call this a "Frantic Verbal Tilt-a-Whirl of Comedy and Shared Genius!" but everyone else prefers the term "production meeting", which I admit rolls off the tongue a little better.

If you had been a fly on the wall at today's meeting...well, someone would probably have swatted you with a newspaper, so I'm not sure why you'd want that. But before your unceremonious swatting, you would have overheard things like this:

"Silly string is fun until you light it on fire, then it becomes a death trap."

"He'll be wrestling Smokey the Bear as he comes on."

"He's about as chill as a German mathematician."

"That's a good question and it deserves an honest answer. Well, goodbye."

"You can't have the Crusher without California.""That's where his powers come from, like Superman and the sun."

"Okay, it looks like we may have to put a hit out on someone.""Dan looked like a magic act with just a floating head and hands.""I hadn't factored in what would happen if I wore a black outfit in front of a black backdrop."

"Where are we going to get a bear suit?""This is San Francisco, you can't throw a rock without hitting one."

"I can only dancefight.""Wait, was this sewn on? When I ripped it I thought it was just velcro."

***

I realize that I've made it pretty much impossible to take anything I say in this space seriously, but let me assure you that all of the above are genuine quotes uttered by real people less than twelve hours ago. Yeah, see, this is why I refer to the Variety Society as "my good job."